So what do I mean by “marketing science”? By that I mean that when most companies actually do a clinical study with their products, they design the study solely with marketing in mind. They don’t really care about the science. They just want to be able to make a marketing claim.

The Landmark Study, the first independent long term (20 year) study done by U Cal Berkeley, had already shown that people taking quality nutritional supplements on a regular basis generally had adequate levels of vitamin D in the blood.

Our company took blood samples from attendees at their 2008 New Orleans conference so that the study would have a large number of subjects with adequate vitamin D levels.

Dr. Maki then recruited a number of non- quality supplement users from local clinics so that the study would also contain a significant number of subjects with low levels of vitamin D in their blood.

This study cannot be used for marketing purposes because a claim that our supplements increased HDL levels would be a health claim. However, this study did advance the science around vitamin D and heart disease risk. We now have a better understanding of how vitamin D reduces heart disease risk. This is what I call “real science” as opposed to “marketing science”,

Dr. Maki said:“Results from population studies suggest that a low serum vitamin D concentration is an independent risk factor for cardiovascular mortality, but this is the first study to evaluate the relationship between vitamin D status and cardiovascular risk factors in a group that includes a large number of vitamin D supplement users.”